


Melanzane alla Parmigiana

by ButterflyGhost



Category: due South
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:43:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3104330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray Vecchio, the morning after the night before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Melanzane alla Parmigiana

 

 _God, I can’t believe I got drunk again._ Ray rested his head against the coolness of the bathroom mirror and swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. _Dammit. Five years this time, and...._

 

Ray bounced his head a little bit on the glass, and tried to think. _What did I do this time?_ he wondered, and worked his way backward through his memories.

 

Last snippet of memory was of him slouching on the couch, drinking whisky from the bottle. Jeeze. Who the hell gave him whisky?

 

No, hang on... memory before that... he was leaving his apartment. Walking to the liquor store... thank God at least he hadn’t driven. Nobody had given him whisky. He’d got it for himself.

 

Before that...

 

Before that...

 

Benny clapping him on the shoulder, and asking him if he was alright. Him lying, “yeah, yeah. I’m fine, Benny.”

 

Kowalski flashing him one of his laser beam looks, like he was trying to x-ray him, then going all casual and slouchy,  pretending not to care.  “So - give us a call if you need anything.”

 

“I’m fine,” Ray lied. “See ya tomorrow,” and slammed the door.

 

Waited a discreet time and went to the liquor store.

 

_Oh shit._

 

So, he’d come home drunk, somehow... what happened before Benny and Kowalski dropped him off? He leaned back from the mirror, and splashed more water on his face. Okay... so before that... before that they’d been at dinner and...

 

Oh. _Oh._

 

They were at dinner. That’s right. Frannie got a call from Renfield – _that’s_ when the evening started to unravel. Or he’d started to unravel, or... whatever.

 

So, Frannie left the meal early because Renfield was panicking about the new baby. Ray had told Frannie that she should hire a sitter “for Ren or the baby, it don’t matter. But you won’t get a break otherwise. You know he’ll call you halfway through dinner because he doesn’t know which end the diaper goes on.”

 

Frannie sprang to her husband’s defence as only Frannie could, declaring that Rennie ‘wanted time alone with the baby –’ which if she’d stopped there, yeah fine. But unfortunately she’d continued with “and what do you mean he needs a sitter? He’s a grown man. A very grown man. In all the important departments....”

 

Last thing Ray wanted to hear was another exaltation of Renfield Turnbull’s manly virtues and macho parts.  He backpedalled as fast as he could, reassuring his sister that he was confident Rennie would be fine.  Which – well, Ray was a good liar, always had been. Frannie simmered down, and Ray prayed that Renfield Turnbull could last three or four hours with a baby. Not that he wasn’t a good father – just a massively insecure one, particularly when the kids were very little.

 

Right on cue, as the entree arrived, Rennie called in a panic that the baby wasn’t asleep yet, he thought her diaper was too dry, maybe she had a fever, maybe she had kidney failure, oh good Lord, she’d just sneezed – maybe it was pneumonia...

 

Which left Ray facing a plateful of melanzane alla parmigiana, which he had ordered in a fit of nostalgia, and now hated the sight of, because nobody was ever going to cook melanzane alla parmigiana like Ma ever again.

 

God. She’d only been gone six months, and it wasn’t like it was unexpected but... She wasn’t ever going to see her newest Granddaughter. Who, Ray was certain, did not have kidney failure, or pneumonia.  Little Sophia was suffering from nothing worse than an anxious father. If Ma was here, she would have reassured the great gangling goof that he was doing fine, just like she did with the first two kids. If Ma was alive, Frannie would be having a night off. Sure, she’d be driving him up the wall with her Frannie-isms and random tangents, and sure it wouldn’t be a family get together if she wasn’t talking about cures for mastitis with Benny (‘you know, Frannie, cabbage leaves worn inside the cup are extremely good at easing the discomfort of...’) but it would be _normal._ It would be normal, and comfortable and....

 

“You okay in there, Vecchio?”

 

Ray startled, badly, and dropped his food on the table cloth. It suddenly struck him as unfair that Kowalski had a glass of the house red, and he didn’t. Who’s bright idea had it been for him to quit drinking anyway?

 

And Ma wasn’t here to be upset or offended by it, so....

 

On a whim Ray stuck a hand out, and alerted the waiter. “Could we have a bottle of the Sassicaia over here please?”

 

Kowalski’s eyes widened with alarm. Fraser folded his arms and leaned back. Great, the two of them really were a team. A minute ago they were probably playing footsie under the table. Now they were ganging up on him.

 

“What?” He pre-empted them, and pointed at Ray’s glass. “It’ll be better than Kowalski’s house Merlot.”

 

“Vecchio...”

 

“Look, I’m buying. On me.”

 

“That’s not it,” Kowalski said.

 

“What is it then?”

 

“Uhm...” Kowalski went mute, which was a first.

 

“Are you supposed to be drinking , Ray?” Fraser asked, bluntly, even rudely, which – wow, that was another kind of first.

 

“Just this once it won’t do any harm,” Ray said, then darted a glance at Benny, and grinned a challenge at him. “Specially if the bottle is split three ways.”

 

“Well –” Fraser flushed. “You know I don’t like to drink –”

 

“See it like toasting the Queen’s birthday,” Ray said.

 

“Well, given that it’s neither one of her birthdays –”

 

“Yeah,” Ray said, and stabbed his food bitterly. “But it’s Ma’s birthday.”

 

“Oh.” Kowalski clapped his forehead, loud enough you could hear the slap from the other side of the table. “Sorry, Jeez. I can’t believe I didn’t remember.”

 

“Ray,” Benny reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry – I forgot. I mean – I know she was never keen on celebrating her own birthday, but that is no excuse for my –”

 

 Kowaski butted in, almost like he was finishing Fraser’s thought. “I just... I mean, we thought you and Frannie were just celebrating New Year or some saint’s day or something.”

 

“Yeah, well, Ma was some kind of a saint.” Ray paused as the waiter poured, then lifted his glass. “You remember, don’t you, Benny, telling me everyone was a saint? Even the Bolts?”

 

“Yes,” Benny said gently. “I remember.”

 

“You are a complete freak,” Kowalski nudged Benny, affection in his voice. “ _’Even the Bolts.’_ Huh. I can just hear you saying that.”

 

“Well, I _did_ say it, Ray.”

 

Kowalski laughed. “You probably believe it too. God, Benton Fraser. I cannot _believe_ I married you.”

 

“Sorry, Kowalski.” Ray lifted his glass. “There were witnesses. I was there. In a suit.”

 

“I remember.” Kowalski pretended to scowl. “And if you ever pull any shit on me again like you did with the rings....”

 

Ray laughed, a pain easing up in his heart, under the influence of good wine and friendship. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t resist it. The look on your faces....”

 

“Well, I never did quite believe you’d lost the rings, Ray.”

 

“Sure you did, Benny. I got you good.”

 

“You nearly got my foot up your ass.”

 

“You know, dinner isn’t the best place to discuss your deviant sexual practises, Kowalski...”

 

Fraser blushed, took a pained sip of the wine, then raised his brows, surprised, and took another sip. “You know, this is rather pleasant.”

 

“Told you.” Ray smiled and started eating again. Dinner suddenly seemed much better.

 

 _Okay. So far so good – apart from the wine._ At least he could remember ordering it. Bracing his arms against the bathroom sink, Ray tried to remember past that point, past the easy camaraderie to whatever it was that went horribly wrong and sent him to the liquor store... He was sure there was some point where he’d really fucked up....

 

He couldn’t even remember leaving the restaurant. He remembered laughing at Benny for being unusually jovial after one glass, he remembered pouring him a second. He remembered Kowalski frowning when another bottle was ordered. He remembered Benny asking for a carafe of water, and being pinker than usual in the cheeks....

 

Oh. Hell. Yeah. And then he sort of remembered... Wasn’t there was some kind of self-pitying morbid interlude over dessert ? Shit. He couldn’t quite remember either the dessert or the subject of the self-pity. What the fuck did he say? He hadn’t started talking about Vegas, had he? He closed his eyes, thinking back... No.

 

No. If he’d told them about Vegas, they’d never have left him by himself for the night. Even so, he couldn’t remember what he’d been so maudlin about. Was that because he was too sloshed to remember, or because it was too embarrassing to think about?

 

Whichever, not good.

 

Must have been bad, because Benny and Kowalski casually, oh so casually, saw him home. Not bad enough for them to stay though, which would have been really shameful.

 

So here he was, back in his nice, well-appointed apartment, with its work office, and its scattering of kids books and toys from when Frannie visited with Thing One, Thing Two and (these days) Thing Three.

 

And here he was in the bathroom, probably finished puking for now, already wanting another drink.

 

Here he was, and five years of sobriety literally down the toilet.

 

Two options.

 

Option One: pretend it hadn’t happened. From experience, he knew how well that _didn’t_ work. He’d be back down the liquor store by the end of the day.

 

Option Two: call Benny and Kowalski. Apologise. For... whatever he’d done. Maybe go stay with what remained of his noisy family, let the kids climb all over him, demand bedtime stories, let Sophia spit up on his shirt.

 

And maybe, if just in his head, he could apologise to Ma for fucking up again. For – God – for using her death as an excuse to get _drunk_ of all things. Pa would be so proud.

 

For a second he had a picture in his head – of him thunking his stupid fucking face on the mirror till the glass cracked and he was bleeding - _No._ That was... what was it Maria’s daughter called Hamlet when she failed her English assignment? Oh, yeah. That would be _‘emo’_ of him. He wasn’t a teenager anymore. And, he knew, he _had_ to know – he hadn’t fucked up his life all over again. It was just one fucked up, loused up evening. He’d been sober for years at a stretch. Three years, followed by seven, followed by five.

 

He could do it again.

 

Yeah, well, so. Frannie would be busy with the family right now. Benny and Kowalski already knew there was a problem – he’d ask them for help. They had offered, after all.

 

He had to ask someone. Time to ditch the pride.

 

He stood back from the sink and took a deep breath.

 

He stared at himself in the mirror and squared his shoulders.   _I can do it._

Start again.  


End file.
